Earle Wayne's nobility

by Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

“Hold!” cried Earle, so sternly that he stopped involuntarily. “Do not dare to take my mother’s pure name upon your vile lips, nor vent your petty spite upon her for what you were alone to blame.”

“Pure name!” burst forth the furious man, recklessly. “Doubtless you are very proud of it—the name that you should bear instead of the one you do. But I have had my revenge, or at least a part of it; for, if through her obstinacy I lost the glory which should have been mine, I did not suffer alone—she was driven out, a nameless outcast, from her ancestral home, never to enter there again, while her proud inheritance descended to another branch of the family, though I don’t know who, and made her offspring a beggar. If she had only told me that night in London,” he went on, talking more to himself than to any one else, “I would gladly have married her on the spot. But she didn’t; when she found I wouldn’t compromise myself, she let her pride ruin both her and me; and how I have hated her ever since. But her suffering was the greater, and I know her sensitive soul must have nearly died within her at the idea of entailing her disgrace upon her offspring. Ah! if I could have found her after that, I’d have made her pay the penalty for cheating me so,” he concluded, with intense bitterness, remembering what he had lost.

“Do not forget that you were the traitor,” Earle said. “You lured her on to destruction with soft words and smiles; you won her pure heart, and tempted her into a secret marriage, professing to love her as simple Marion Vance, and for the innocent love she lavished upon you. You did all this to amuse yourself and pass away an idle summer. She believed you, and trusted in your honor, and she gloried in her secret, because of the joyful surprise she would be able to give you when you should go with her to her father to confess that she was your wife. If you had been true to her, if you had not tried to play that dastardly trick upon her, you might have attained to the greatness which your mean and ambitious soul coveted. You cheated yourself, and now the meanest of all traits that weak human nature is heir to is revealed in you—you hate the one you sought to injure, simply because you overreached yourself, and the wrong recoiled in a measure upon you.”

Sumner Dalton glared angrily at him, for Earle read his degraded nature like an open book, and it was by no means pleasant to be compelled to view the picture he had drawn.

“You appear to know all about your mother’s history,” he said at last, with some curiosity.

“Yes,” he answered, with a look of pain; “I know it all—how she suffered when you did not come to her—how anxious she grew when she discovered that her honor must be vindicated, and you did not even write to her in answer to her heart-rending appeals—how she determined that she would be acknowledged as your lawful wife, and sought you in London one dismal night, and begged you, with all the eloquence which she could command, to right the wrong you had done her. Had you consented, she resolved to tell you then and there of the brilliant future awaiting you. But you spurned her from you instead—you turned coldly from her and her almost idolatrous love, mocking her misery, and telling her that the woman you married must be endowed with wealth and position—if she could assure you of these, you would consent to make her an honorable wife; but you would not marry her to save her from the shame that you had brought upon her. Then it was that she learned your utter heartlessness—that you cared for nothing or for no one but yourself and the things that would serve to gratify your selfish ambition. She would not be an unloved wife, and she knew that when you should discover the greatness you had missed you would be rightly punished; and so, in her pride, she turned from you in silence regarding her prospects, vowing that she would not wed you then if it would save both your lives; she resolved to bear her shame alone, knowing that the day was not far distant when you would be willing to sacrifice much to undo that wrong—when you would curse yourself for your folly. I judge from your words to-day that that time did come—that you suffered keenly when you discovered that the trap you had set for your victim had also sprung on yourself. As I said before, you are the man for whom I have been searching for the last seven years—that was the business upon which I went that night when this house was robbed, and returning became entangled in the affair. I thought I had gained a clew to the whereabouts of a George Sumner, and I meant, if I found you, to brand you the traitor and the coward that you are——”

“Softly—softly, young man,” interrupted Sumner Dalton, a white light gleaming from his eyes. “I suppose you mean by that that you would like to pommel me within an inch of my life; but this is a country which does not permit such things—there are penalties for such indiscretions as those, and as you have already served one term for the benefit of the State, I hardly think you would enjoy another.”

Oh, how the heart of Earle Wayne rebelled against this insult! But he knew that retribution did not always fall upon the offender in the form of blows, and he answered, with quiet scorn:

“You mistake, sir. I would not degrade myself enough to lay even a finger upon you.”

This shot told; Earle could see by the twitching of the muscles about his mouth, and the sudden clenching of his hands, and he replied, with malevolent spite: